Gone Missing

Many of you miss your Jerry, your John, and even your Hunter. As a talkative Gemini, a verbal communicator supreme, I mourn the loss of Spalding Gray who went missing two years ago.

He was a shared favorite between myself and Radio Jeff, a long-lost friend from Portland, Wa., who enjoyed and longed for more great storytellers, more great masters of the spoken word. We joked that we should tour the nation to revive the lost art of the spoken word, knowing all too well that Spalding was already out there and doing it. One part dramatic monologuist, and one part stand-up comedian, Spalding Gray equaled all-out exposure into the most humiliating and personal moments of his life -- the moments that we all share -- and made them into stories to be absorbed into our cultural fabric.

Our modern cultural fabric is certainly larger thanks to the internet, but as Marshall McLuhan suggested, perhaps we become more disconnected the more connected we become. Certainly, documenting and archiving events for the future is necessary, but the move from the tradition of storytelling may well be reducing not only our cultural mental prowess, but tradition of storytelling as a way of creating community.

I love language. I love to read, but it is the spoken word that moves me further and faster. No doubt, that is why I found Spalding so compelling and why I still find the French language to be so fascinating. There are complexities and subtle tricks of spoken French that are demystified once transcribed.
Vraiment = really
vrai ment = truth lies
It practically begs to be used in a comedy of errors.

The value of the spoken word will continue. But I hope for more challenges such as La Dictée des Amériques -- an annual French-language competition held in Montreal. I hope for more English teachers who are willing to devote the time to modernizing and demystifying the language of Shakespeare. Above all, I hope that there is another (or more than one) budding Spalding Gray knocking about town.